


The Storm that Led Us Here

by betweenthetwo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-10
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthetwo/pseuds/betweenthetwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>After the War, and all it cost him, Jaime encounters a serving girl from Tarth at Casterly Rock.</b>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>For all Brienne and the loss of his hand changed him, he is still himself, still Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer, Lord of Casterly Rock, father of a deposed King, father of a dead King. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the rain, there is a voice

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through ADWD, everything beyond that point is pure speculation.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _________
> 
>  
> 
> I am the river wide, cross me never
> 
> I am the mountainside
> 
> All kinds of weather
> 
> ~ Rock of Ages, Black Prairie
> 
> ____________

* * *

JAIME

* * *

When he hears there is a girl in the fortress from Tarth, he summons her to the hall while he dines alone.

"I didn't know her very well, my lord," the girl says, embarrassed. She is nervous of him. He loves it and loathes it. He is, after all, still two men. The one who could bed Cersei and cuckold a King, the other who found Sansa Stark and spared the life of her captor when a strong hand stilled his sword.

"Indulge me." He has found it harder, as time marches on, to cling to the goodness Brienne seemed to see in him. He does not have his father or Cersei whispering plots and schemes in his ear, but he also has little time for kindness, especially towards a serving girl.

"Lady Brienne was very kind to me, Ser. She didn't much care for dresses or braids, but she did always let me brush out her hair and clean her shirts."

He smirks. He can't imagine anyone being able to coax the wench's short hair into anything resembling a fashionable style.

"These past years, she spent much time with her father, Lord Selwyn. Her husband," - he grimaces at the mention of Hunt, that spineless itinerant - "was often away, he had business elsewhere, she told me."

"Do you think that upset her?" he asks, an old ache in his chest thrumming to life.

"No, my lord. With all due respect to Lord Hunt, my mistress preferred to spend her days in the training yards and her nights in conversation with her father. She did not have much time for a husband."

He barks a laugh and she starts, ready to bolt. He can just imagine Brienne watching Hunt ride away "on business" with a sigh of relief. He just hopes the fool kept his promise of fidelity, if nothing else.

"My lady spoke of you often, Ser," the girl ventures after a moment of silence. He wonders if he has been so transparent. "She was fond of you." Her tone belies confusion; of course she must wonder how a woman such as Brienne could hold anything other than contempt for a man such as him.

"We traveled together for a time," he tells her by way of explanation, and then lifts his stump. "She was with me when Vargo Hoat took my sword hand..."

"And then you saved her from his bear," the girl finishes, blushing. "She told me, Ser. And about how you gave her Oathkeeper, and how she led you to Lady Stoneheart, and how you found Sansa Stark together in the Vale before the dragons came."

He raises an eyebrow.

"You seem to know as much as I," he quips.

"I only wonder, Ser..."

"How the virtuous and honorable Brienne of Tarth bore the company of a Kingslayer?" He is so very weary.

She shakes her head and meets his eyes. "No, Ser. It is that... I wonder that you never visited Tarth, is all."

It is a lance to the chest. After Daenerys' pardon, after Cersei's death and the safe - if tense - return of his brother: this is the blow.

"Lady Brienne..." he pauses, still not sure if he understands after all this time. "She returned to Tarth before my sister died. When next we spoke, she was betrothed to Hyle Hunt. I was needed here." Is it an explanation, an excuse? He would have gone if she'd asked him too. She would have come if he'd invited her.

"Well, I am certain she missed your company, and treasured the time you had together," the girl offers.

"What's your name?" he asks, gently, really noticing her for the first time. She is not tall, and is built like a rake, all bones and angles. Her skin is pale, almost white, but her eyes are a strong blue, almost as bright as Brienne's, shocking in contrast to her dark, nearly black hair. She looks as if a wind might snap her as a twig, but he senses a steel behind her downcast eyes.

"Alysane Storm." A bastard, of course. How else could a girl this bright and pretty be relegated to a serving maid?

"Were you there... were you with the Lady Brienne at the end?" He doesn't think about those final days, hasn't thought about them since he received the raven from Evenfall. He cannot imagine Brienne diminished.

"I was." Her fondness for the wench is clear. He is happy she had a friend, especially a female friend, with her at the last.

"I am sure you were a great comfort to her in that time."

"I tried my best, Ser. She felt great pain..."

"And now you work here?" He does not want to know. What good is it to imagine the suffering he only learned of too late? Even if he had been there, beside her, he could not have saved her from the malignant growth inside her, the sickness that ate her from the inside out.

"I assist Lady Myrcella's maid." His daughter's running girl. He can't have that.

"What age are you?"

"Five and twenty." A year younger than Brienne. He knows better than to assume a girl of her age is a child.

"I am promoting you, Alysane. I would like you to attend my council as my page."

"But, Ser! I am a woman..."

"Yes, I see that. I presume you can read and write?" She only nods, overwhelmed. "Then you will serve me well."

"I am afraid I do not understand, Ser. A page is a man's role."

"As is the role of a Knight, but Brienne of Tarth was the bravest, most honorable Knight Westeros has ever seen," he told her. "And you will be the promptest, most organized page Casterly Rock has ever dreamed of."

She blushes, and looks to the floor. In a fit of something - empathy, lust, grief? - he reaches out with his left hand and cups her chin, raising her eyes to his own.

"I loved Brienne," he tells her honestly, watching her eyes widen. Love has not come easy to him and the words are awkward in his mouth but he knows it as he knows he is alive. If Brienne knew, if she loved him, he is less certain. If he desired her, he has spent many hours, many nights, attempting to understand. Perhaps that is what kept him from Evenfall.

"She saved me in more ways than I can count. I want you with me, but only if you will honor her with your service. You must be bold and brash, unafraid to argue with me. Do not hesitate to challenge the Eastern lords, to correct the merchants of Lannisport. And most importantly: look me in the eye when you speak with me."

He sees a change in her then, a straightening of the shoulders and a set in her jaw. It is as if the fear and shyness have been shrugged off like an ill-fitting cloak. For a moment, in those blue eyes, he sees a strength and a shine he has not seen for years. The ache in his chest throbs, then subsides.

In a blink, it is gone, and she is returned to herself, having somehow extricated her face from his grasp.

"I will serve you well, my lord, for Lady Brienne." She nods, waits a moment for further instructions, and when they do not come, bows gracefully and leaves without a sound.

He is not a good man, not a nice man. He is not even a full man, crippled as he is. He is a Lannister, debt-paying and oath-breaking. He fucked his sister and let her raise his children as the children of that oaf Robert Baratheon. He killed the Mad King and he pushed a young boy out a window to keep his secrets safe. He saw Cersei tried at the hands of Daenerys Targaryen and he did not flinch when the Queen bade him light the flame underneath her pyre as proof of his loyalty.

But, he is also the man who restored Sansa Stark to the North, who spared Petyr Baelish's life and saw him tried at Winterfell. He helped deliver Jon Snow - now Targaryen, he supposes - to the Red Keep, and he kept peace in the city when the Dragon Queen arrived.

Above all that, he saved Brienne from rape and mutilation at the hands of Vargo Hoat, and he rescued her and Payne from the Brotherhood Without Banners. He punched Red Ronnet Connington for disrespecting her and he tended to the rope burns on her neck and the bite marks on her cheek on The Quiet Isle.

He let her go, let her marry Hyle and return to Tarth, rather than keep her with him, next to him, as he repaired his home and his family name, as he mended his relationship with his brother and his remaining children. He did not make her wait while he muddled through the mess that was his heart, he did not have her next to him when he dreamed of Cersei in the nights before and after her death.

Did he do the right thing? He does not know what that would even mean, but he did try to do the honorable thing. There were no oaths to break; they parted equals. She chose Hunt and Tarth and her father and she didn't look back, either.

In this moment, it does not help. He can remember her frown, her puckered cheek, her small breasts. He can remember her voice, "Kingslayer", "Jaime", her sword kissing his before he lost his hand. He remembers those eyes, those astonishing eyes in that homely face.

He walks to the window, stares down at the dark waves crashing against the rock and he wonders if he has done right by her with Alysane. It is a selfish decision to keep her close, as he could not keep Brienne. Hard as it will be, he will be honorable toward her. He will not seduce her or coerce her, he will not slip his good hand up her skirts as she stands next to him.

Or, perhaps he will. Perhaps he will love her in the ways he did not - for want of desire or opportunity, he does not know - love Brienne. He could even marry her, for what further shame could he bring to a disgraced house? The Dragon Queen would probably approve of the match, fond as she is of slaves and servants. He could have his way with her, make her his, and abandon her to bear her bastard alone on the streets of Lannisport - who expects more of him than that? For all Brienne and the loss of his hand changed him, he is still himself, still Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer, Lord of Casterly Rock, father of a deposed King, father of a dead King.

"My Lord?" It is Alysane, at the door. How long has he been standing, thinking? He acknowledges her. "The Lords of the Westerlands are here for Council," she tells him. "Will you be needing my services?"

Yes. He will.


	2. I hear your thunder in my heart

* * *

 ALYSANE

* * *

 

"I loved Brienne."

Oh, how his words echo in her mind for days to come. She is busy - busier than anyone else in Casterly Rock it seems - but even as she sits next to Lord Jaime at his council meetings, carries ledgers to his brother and sits up each night practicing her penmanship, the words do not leave her. She worries she will transcribe them next to a list of demands from Kings Landing. She worries she might speak them aloud in his presence.

He frightens her, the one-handed Lord of Casterly Rock.  At first she had not recognized him from Lady Brienne's tales of valor and bravery; the Lord of Casterly Rock seemed - diminshed. His brother was the engaging one, barrelling through the halls with Tommen and the Redwyne ward, singing drunkenly over dinner while Lord Jaime looked on, sometimes smirking, sometimes barely blinking. Tyrion Lannister appeared free.  Lord Jaime was like a caged lion, but not the kind who roars and struggles against his captors.  No, he was like a beast she had seen in a travelling Mummers show as a girl; the animal had been beautiful.  Every aspect of his form spoke of a power in reserve, a strength like nothing she had ever seen.  But, even as she silently willed him to stand and move about, he remained laying down, his chest rising and falling slowly, his eyes boring through hers.  Empty.

That had been before he had asked to speak with her, and she had stood before him with her heart hammering in her chest as he quizzed her about Lady Brienne.  Before he met her gaze directly, before he employed her as his page, before he held her chin in his hand and ordered her to challenge him.

She knows it is not about her, she knows enough about people to know when they are talking to you or at you, when they really see you or see some version of you crafted from their hopes, their ghosts.  She is his page, and she follows his directions dutifully, but for all her hard work, she knows the only reason he sought her out was in service to a memory.  When he hands her books to return to Lord Tyrion’s library, or asks her opinion on a local dispute, she feels his eyes search her face, begging the questions he hasn't asked since her first meeting with him.

Beneath every glance, _Brienne_.

 

* * *

 

"And were you very afraid, my Lady?" She asked, enraptured, her comb stilling in her mistresses short hair.

"Only entirely," Brienne replied with a wry smile. "Pod, Hyle and I were struck dumb with terror, meanwhile Ser Jaime was bothering Lord Hunt about his lands and prospects."

"Was Ser Jaime not afraid, then?"

The light in Lady Brienne's eyes could have warmed the sapphire seas for days.

"He must have been, I suppose, but he never behaved as such.  Even in the presence of Lady Stoneheart, his wit never faltered.  That, of course, almost got him killed."

Alys knew Jaime Lannister was a dangerous man.  She had heard stories of him her whole life.  Kingslayer.  Oath breaker.  A man without honor.  Before her execution, Cersei Lannister had sworn he was the father of Kings Tommen and Joffrey, and the Princess Myrcella.  He was a scoundrel of the worst kind; a liar, a sinner and a murderer.

But to hear Lady Brienne tell it, he was a savior.  A brave, honorable knight who had stood between her and death a thousand times.  He seemed, at times, the ultimate romantic hero - battle scarred and spurned by those he served, fighting courageously and thanklessly, never receiving any respect or gratitude for his deeds.

“It was cold - so cold I felt my legs would freeze to the spot if I did not keep moving.  The snow was so thick we could barely see more than a sword’s length in front of us.  We moved in a circling diamond - at this point, Hyle was in the front, Pod and I in the middle, and Ser Jaime at the rear.  We knew we could not be more than a mile from the Wall, but of course, we could not see a thing, and the winds whistled like voices around us.”

Alysane shivered. She had faced many of her own nightmares when the sellswords had taken Tarth, but stories of the North and the White Walkers never failed to turn the blood in her veins to ice.

“As we walked, each of us imagined shapes emerging out of the snow.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, Hyle shouted -- well, a word I won’t repeat here -- and stumbled.  We stopped dead, certain this was it, that The Others were upon us.  I unsheathed the dragonglass blade Lady Sansa had given me at Winterfell, and inched forward.  Then, I felt something press against the blade in front of me, a great pressure, cold and strong...”

“Was it a White Walker, my lady?” Alysane asked, breathless.

“It was... the Wall!” Brienne shrieked with uncharacteristic laughter.  “Hyle had walked straight into it, and I had stabbed it with my dragonglass blade! Oh, Ser Jaime did not ever let me live it down. ‘Careful, wench,’ he’d say, if we were in a chamber at Castle Black, ‘better keep an eye on that wall.  I hear they can be quite lethal.’  I can just hear him now, in my mind.  ‘Brienne the Blind’, he introduced me to the Lord Commander.”  Brienne was laughing, her bright blue eyes crinkled in amusement, but Alysane could hear a sliver of sadness in her tone, a longing she would not fully recognize until she came to Casterly Rock.

 

* * *

 

“How many bales of hay did the The Crag receive from the Lannisport farmers guild?” he asks, frowning at the parchment in his hands.  Supper has come and gone and they are still in Lord Jaime’s study, poring over accounts.  

“Forty-five.”

“Bushels of wheat?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve?”

“Twelve, my Lord.”

“Are you certain?”

“Would you care to read the ledger yourself?” she asks, frustrated.  He has been demanding figures from her for an hour now, and he has second-guessed her at least ten times. Cringing slightly at her own tone, she risks a glance in his direction.  He isn’t looking at her, but there is a small smile on his lips.  She files it away, adds it to the list.

“The letter we received from the guild suggests they provided five and twenty bushels.”

"Is the mistake in the ledger or the letter?" she asks frowning at the numbers in front of her.

"That would appear to be the central question.” He tosses the letter on the table and rubs his eyes with his left hand.  She wonders if he is likely to remember that they have not eaten.  She will have to ask the cook to bring him something when they are done.

"Who prepares the ledgers?" 

"This particular ledger comes to us from The Crag.  It is their annual accounting."

"So the Westerlings are attempting to cheat Casterly Rock?" She concludes, surprised.  Who would have the nerve?

"Or the farmers are inflating their harvests," he suggests.  She feels his eyes appraising her and fights the urge to shrink into herself.

"It is possible my Lord, but..." She pauses.

"But?" He asks, more curious than impatient.

"I do not believe the farmers guild would risk angering your family in this way.  The risk of losing the patronage of Casterly Rock is far greater than the reward.”

"But you believe the Noble House of Westerling, Lords of the Crag, capable of supplying us with false records in order to decrease their owed debt?" he asks, eyebrow raised in challenge.

She remembers Lady Brienne's face when she spoke of Robb and Catelyn Stark.

"I believe the Westerlings capable of anything, my Lord." She meets his eyes.  They are as green and deep as eyes can be.  He inhales deeply, brow furrowed slightly.  For the first time she sees a glimpse of Brienne in him, in the set of his jaw, the way his thoughts seep onto his face.

Silence sits between them, dense but not uncomfortable.  She busies herself with the parchments to her right, organizing them into a small pile.  Alysane remembers Lord Selwyn and the depth of his thinking, the quiet hours that passed between him and his daughter.

"Did you support a King during the war?" He asks.  The question throws her and she struggles to form an acceptable answer.  She knows King Joffrey was cruel and insane, but also knows he was Lord Jaime's son.  And of course, there was King Tommen, sweet boy that he is.  "Don't worry that you will offend me,” he assures her gently.  “My children had no right to the throne."

She offers him a small, grateful smile.

"I do not know much of politics," she begins.

"Nonsense, you just made one of the most astute political statements I've heard in years!"  He is smiling encouragingly at her; it is loosening her bones.

"I supported King Renly at first," she admits. "Lord Selwyn supported him, and of course we all remembered his visit to Tarth.  After he died, I hoped the King in the North might prevail, but..."

"But the Freys, the Boltons, the Westerlings and the Lannisters saw to that," he finishes, his lips thinning.  "Do you know, when Roose Bolton killed Robb Stark, the last words Stark heard were 'Jaime Lannister sends his regards'?"

"Yes, my Lord, but Brienne told me the truth of it, that you had nothing to do with Robb Stark's murder." She can tell it is important to him that the history is accurate.  The facts may not always reflect kindly on him and his family, but at least they are better than the lies.

"His death was good for my family," he says, shrugging, affecting a nonchalance she might have believed before.  Now she sees it for what it is: an understanding of the depth of what has happened to them all, often at the hands of those he loved most.  "I was not involved in Bolton's treachery, but I benefited from his desire to please my father, and my siblings and children escaped the wrath the Starks surely would have unleashed upon them."

"We cannot know what might have been," she reminds him. "Nor can we govern the actions of others, even those we love."  She resists the human urge to touch him, to lay her hand on his, to smooth the hair on his brow.  

"You're very wise for a handmaiden from some backwater island," he teases finally, peering at her with what she can only describe as a cheeky smile.

"Haven't you heard?" she responds archly.  "I am no handmaiden, I'm a page to Lord Jaime Lannister of Casterly Rock."

He laughs then, and she joins him, feeling the weight of the day, of the war, lifting from them both.  She is reminded of Brienne’s easy, surprising laughter on Tarth, as she told the story of “ _Brienne the Blind_ ”.  The lightness in the room emboldens her.  

“She loved you too,” she tells him, softly.  For a moment she thinks he will respond, but he simply closes his eyes.  “She wasn’t one for proclamations of love, but she told me tales of your travels together.  It was obvious that she longed for those times.  For you.

“After she died, there was nothing left for me on Tarth, and nowhere for me to go.  But I loved her too, you see, and I thought... if you were the man she told me you were, I wanted to see you for myself.  To understand.”

The weight of her words are exhausting.  She releases a small breath into the the silence that follows. A large part of her, the part that has spent most of her life in service, is mortified at her own audacity.  She wishes she could melt into the wall.  She wishes she could jump from the Wall.

He is silent and his eyes remain closed.  She can see the tension in his jaw. His hand clenches, the nails of his left hand digging into his palm.  She imagines there will be a mark.

“I will leave the Westerling ledgers at your disposal, my Lord.”  She stands and arranges her gown, lighting a candle for herself and placing her notes on his desk before leaving quietly.  On her way to her rooms, she rouses the scullery maid and tells her to bring Lord Jaime some bread, cheese, and wine.

There is a relief to having spoken the words aloud.  She feels less haunted by the walls around her, by the ghosts in Lord Jaime's eyes.  Even so, she lies awake all night, remembering Brienne's final hours, the sheen of sweat on her skin, the fight in her eyes.

With each shuddering breath, _Jaime_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there. Next chapter is back in Jaime's POV, and we'll see his goodbye with Brienne. I have two plans for this story, one with four chapters total, the other with six. I'd like to work in Tyrion (and some insight into his relationship with his absent wife) and a resolution for Alys and Jaime.


	3. What winds might blow us where

* * *

  
JAIME

* * *

Life after the war bores him. He craves the urgency of battle, the impermanence of existence. There are still ripples of violence in the countryside, he knows, not that he could or would do anything about it. With one hand and an unspoken order from the Queen to keep his head down, the practice yards of Casterly Rock are his battleground now, old as he is. Worthless as he is.

The Redwyne boy, Alistair, is learning to wield a broadsword. His master-at-arms is a sellsword friend of Tyrion's whose own escape from the executioner's block might be even more miraculous than his own. The man is almost always in his cups when Jaime encounters him indoors, but today he is a relentless military man as he drills the young boy on parrys and blocks. Alistair is strong for his age, and tall, but his feet are slow and his reactions need work. There is no need to tell this to Bronn, who hacks at his heels with his own weapon, urging the boy to move. It might be a lost cause, and does it matter? The boy will likely squire for a Tyrell, idle fools that they are, and never know the feel of an enemy's steal at his throat.

"Ah, dearest brother, I had thought to find you in the servants’ quarters." It is Tyrion, relentless.

He could make a jape about that handmaiden they found in his father's bed at Kings Landing. Instead he offers his brother a forgiving smile and indicates that they should move to the battlements.

"What news from Winterfell?" He asks, gesturing at the missive in his brother's hands.

"My wife is well, and her letters dutiful as ever. Her sister is travelling South to the Hand of the Queen at Kings Landing. She asks for safe passage through the Westerlands. Apparently she wishes to visit some Baratheon bastard in Lannisport."

"The blacksmith, I believe. He tried to take my head." Would have, but for Brienne.

"The same could be said of half of the Kingdom."

"Only half? Consider the Tyrells and what remains of the Vale."

"Too true. However did you survive?" A rhetorical question.

Jaime pauses at a lower battlement, allowing his brother to survey the choppy seas alongside him. There are ships headed for Lannisport, bringing spices and wine that will help restore the wealth of Casterly Rock. The ships are their future; sad, lonely old men that they will be.

"Can we find a husband for Myrcella?" Jaime asks.

"The Queen has some sympathy for her," Tyrion informs him. "She asks after her and Tommen at Court. I don't know if sympathy extends to generosity, however. She may believe she has exhausted her benevolence in our regard."

"She is a fine girl, a gentle spirit. Quite unlike her..." He is going to say mother, stops himself. "Her parents. I do not want her to grow old and sour on this rock."

"She is young yet, and fond of her brother. And of you, you know. Which is a miracle in its own right."

Tyrion is teasing, Jaime knows, and he appreciates that time has brought them back here, to this easy ribbing. But he also knows that there is a great truth in his brother's words; it is the gift he never deserved, the love of two children whose prospects and lives have been ruined by him.

"I could ask Sansa if there is a suitable match in the North?" Of course, Tyrion loves Myrcella as much as Jaime does, has been allowed to love her for her entire life.

"Do not waste the precious few words you share with your wife. Myrcella is a child of summer. I do not think she would fare well out of the South." She blossomed, after all, in Dorne, before the Darkstar.

"On the contrary, you would do me a service. I am forever at a loss for reasons to write her." This is where the hard truths fall; between jokes and plans and idle thoughts.

"Why not write, "Allow me to join you at Winterfell? Allow me to do my duty as your husband, to father your children? To warm your cold Northern bed?"

Tyrion raises an eyebrow in surprise.

"How heartfelt, brother. Growing sentimental in your old age?"

"She is your wife, Tyrion. Daenerys Targaryen would have annulled the union if Sansa had wished it. She did not." The arranged marriages of half of the kingdom were deemed null by the new Queen. His father's machinations, in ruins.

"She did not come to Casterly Rock, nor did she invite me North." Tyrion is afraid, of that much Jaime is certain. After Tysha, after the girl at Kings Landing... He may not yet love his wife, but he is unwilling to risk his heart.

Jaime cannot call his brother a coward.

 

 

* * *

 

"We are full two days North of Kings Landing," she protested. "The roads are treacherous, especially now. I cannot leave you."

His passionate wench. Her scarred cheeks were pinched pink by the frigid air.

"I have Snow and his men. Your father needs you," he reminded her gently.

She stilled her horse, frowning over the countryside, her line of vision pointed in the direction of the sea. Snow's band of misfits rode on ahead of them. In the set of her jaw, he recognized the pull of too many promises, he felt her agony in his bones.

"You have no duty left to me," he said softly. He did not want to see her go, could not imagine those last two days between him and his fate without her, but the time for selfishness was over.

She glanced at him quickly, looking almost hurt, then schooled her features and looked away again. His Brienne, so good at erecting her walls.

"I could reach Tarth from Storms End," she suggested eventually.

"Another day’s ride, wench. If you are to leave, go now and reach your father by nightfall tomorrow." He preferred a swift blow. Like the loss of a limb. (Had not that been easier?).

"Forgive me, Ser, I do not wish to inflict my presence on you any longer than is necessary."

Of course she misinterpreted him. She seemed to make a sport of it. Laugh at her? Strike her? Kiss her? He was never sure which would injure her most.

"You mistake me, my Lady. I only wish to give you your freedom."

"My freedom is not yours to give."

"Must you be so prickly? I feel I'm arguing with Ned Stark." He realized too late that it would be a compliment to her, deranged as she was. He even detected a faint smile on her scarred face.

"That was intended as a jape, wench," he grumbled, but he could not keep the warmth from his voice.

For a wild, mad moment he contemplated leaving with her. He had heard so much of Tarth’s sapphires seas, had, in the fevered hours following the escape from the Vale, dreamed of comparing them to her eyes and finding the waters wanting. And Lord Selwyn must have been a lark, if he'd raised a daughter like her. Even on his deathbed, he'd probably be worth a priceless story or two about Brienne as a child.

But, childhood, children were the very reason he could not join her. Cersei awaited trial in Kings Landing. Myrcella and Tommen were hostages in the Red Keep. Jon Snow was his only chance to save them once Daenerys Targaryen reached the capital.

"Ser Hunt has asked to accompany me," she told him. He suppressed a grimace. The sod's intentions were nothing if not clear.

"It is safer if you do not travel alone,” he admitted. “The Blackfyre's men are known to be scattered east of here. Will you take Payne?"

She nodded, glad of the offer.

"Send a raven when you arrive. Best to address it to Snow, I may be indisposed.” He did not say: Imprisoned. Dead.

"If I find my father well, or...” she paused, gathering strength. “I will come to you." It was as close to love as Jaime had felt in his life, so pure and undeserved was her loyalty. Her friendship.

"No need to be so morose," he teased, afraid of the weight of his heart. "The men will think we are lovers."

How he wished to stay in that moment: the red shock of her blush against her cheeks, the puff of her frozen breath in the air as she exhaled sharply. There were so few incidents of pure innocence left in the world: this was one.

"Will you be careful?" She asked quickly. "I know deference is not in your nature, I know you are proud. But will you give Lord Jon and Queen Daenerys Daenerys your respect?"

"I'm begging for my children's lives," he assured her. "I will be so humble that even you, who has seen me at lowest, would not know me."

"Do not forget to beg for your own life."

He wanted to dismount, to embrace her, but he was afraid if he did he might not let her go.

"Hunt! Payne!" His voice was sharp. The two men whipped their horses around and doubled back. He supposed they had been waiting for the call, had known what he and Brienne discussed. Once they were close enough, he rounded on Hunt and leveled him with a piercing glare. "You are to escort Lady Brienne to Tarth. Take the copse road to the coast. Stay clear of Maidenpool and Rook’s Rest. Take a ship from The Whispers. "

"Yes, Ser." Jaime wondered if Hunt knew how much he despised him. He didn't suppose it mattered much. This would likely be the last time they laid eyes on each other.

"If you encounter the Golden Company, get her away from them. Do not stand and fight - they are without a buyer and desperate." He heard her scoff at that, knew she would be furious at the insinuation that she was anything other than the best fighter among them. He didn't have time for flattery, all that mattered was that she survived, Hunt and Payne and pride be damned.

"Yes, Ser." Payne was a good, obedient type. Jaime knew he would die himself before he allowed anything to happen to Brienne. It wasn't much of a comfort, but it was the best he would get.

"Go quickly and ride hard."

Hunt and Payne nodded brusquely, wished him the favor of the Gods, and trotted forward to allow them some... what, privacy? He pulled his horse alongside hers.

He met her eyes, wide and troubled. His heart ached. He could still ask her to join him.

"I will come to Kings Landing," she told him. "I swe...". He reached out, placed a finger across her lips. She was as still as a statue.

"No more promises, Brienne." He had not shared with her his plan to lay his own life down before Daenerys Targaryen, his life in exchange for his children. A small part of him hoped she expected it of him, this first, final, honorable act. "Don't look back."

She frowned. In the single most surprising moment of his life, she lifted her hand to his and pressed his fingers to her lips. A kiss so gentle, so swift, it might not have happened.

"Goodbye, Ser Jaime," she whispered, and with a kick of her heels, she urged her mount on and away.

He stayed, still, as she, Hunt and Payne rode east without a backward glance, their horses kicking clouds of snow in their wake. He watched until they were swallowed by the falling snow, then watched a few moments longer, staring into nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

The absence of Brienne is a tangible lack that does not fade with time. Today, staring his future in the face, with his back to the castle and eyes on the sea, nothing on his mind but marriage arrangements and slow-footed wards, he cannot shake the unease that settled over him as she rode away.

He had not been prepared for this eventuality, believing death was the best mercy he could hope for from Daenerys. It had not crossed his mind that he would live, that she would not live. He did not imagine that he would be alive to miss her blush, her voice, her warmth as they bedded down for the night with clothes and ground and air between them.

"My Lords?" How often Alysane appears when he needs her most, when he most feels that nothing is, or can, or will be right again.

He does not miss the significant look Tyrion gives him. The promotion of a pretty handmaid is low hanging fruit. Today she is dressed in Lannister red, a ripe apple.

"Your cousin Lyonel Frey has sent a raven from Riverrun." The brothers roll their eyes, players in the comedy of life.

"What great disaster has befallen gentle Lyonel today? Tyrion asks.

"He believes he has been slighted by the Queen. It appears there was a meeting of the Lords of the Trident and his raven arrived four full days later than his brother’s."

This is life, after the war. Petty squabbles and slights and jealousies. Honestly, why did they fight? So that foolish men like Lyonel Frey could claim lands they had no right to, and spend the rest of their sorry existence tormenting their betters?

"Can we ignore him?" Tyrion asks petulantly. Alysane fights a smile.

"Aunt Genna would descend on us in a heartbeat," Jaime warns.

"Alysane, could you wait for me in my Solar after supper?" Tyrion asks with a dramatic sigh. "We must needs write to the Hand of the Queen."

If Alysane is surprised or pleased or disappointed, Jaime cannot tell. When she first arrived at Casterly Rock, she was an open book. The months have shaken the skittishness from her; she possesses entirely now that confidence and composure he glimpsed in her at their first meeting. Nodding respectfully to them both, she excuses herself. There is something peculiarly graceful in her movement. A dancer perhaps?

"You don't mind me borrowing her for the evening, brother?" Tyrion asks mischievously. _Impishly_ , Jaime thinks sourly. "She is so much easier on the eye than Dewan." Tyrion's own page is a glum, humorless young man from the Reach.

"I would prefer you deal with Lyonel," Jaime says. "I might threaten to dispatch him in the manner of his grandfather." Tyrion barks a quick laugh and the brothers share a wry, inherited smile. It could be worse, Jaime knows.

“Is Alysane as nubile as she looks, I wonder?” It could be better, too. The question earns his brother a swift kick. “I only ask because she seems thoroughly wasted on you.”

Jaime wants to say: I waste her because I can, because she is nothing to me, because everything about her that is keeping me alive has nothing to do with her and everything to do with the woman who left me here alone, the woman I told to go. I waste her because I don’t know how to want her.

Instead: “Perhaps I should tell Dewan you’ve passed him over for a girl. He would write such a fine letter of complaint to his father. Who would write such a fine letter of complaint to you.”

“We are both practiced in the art of idle threats,” Tyrion muses. “But once a young man with a small fortune sets his sights on her, she’ll be out of your employ before you can say ‘allow me to show you my prodigious ledger, Alysane’.”

“Let us hope for your sake that same young man doesn’t set his sights on your wife before you can say ‘oh, but your Northern foliage is so very lush, Sansa.”

Another smile is exchanged, but beneath their almost identical grins, a glimmer of unease. So much has been lost by both: mother, father, sister, uncle, son, nephew, lover, friend. How can his brother expect him to dream of anything other than a retreating back, to hear the word “love” in anything other than the past tense?

“You can have her for this evening, but you’ll have to find your own handmaiden to promote if you plan to throw over Dewan,” Jaime warns, for the sake of conversation.

“Don’t worry, brother,” Tyrion says with a smirk as he walks away. “I won’t steal her from you.”

The retorts are on his tongue: You cannot steal a memory. You cannot steal a ghost. You cannot steal what I do not have, what I never had.

 

 


	4. The sea is dangerous and the storm is terrible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments and kudos! Please excuse Ser Hyle's foul language below, he is quite worked up.
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter title is from the following quote from Vincent Van Gogh:  
> "The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore."

* * *

 

ALYSANE

* * *

Lord Selwyn Tarth was not dying.  

****

His illness was presumed fatal by a Maester who had only ever known the man to be ruddy-cheeked, fair-humored and robust.  The dwindling of that jovial Lord into the pale, pensive patient he saw before him was sufficiently jarring to convince Maester Hoth that the end was near.  He prescribed a regimen of milk of the poppy to ease Lord Selwyn into his death, and he ordered that men and ravens be dispatched to locate his daughter and return her home as soon as possible.  Tarth had no appointed Castellan, the Stormlands were in no position to provide one, and the Golden Company had decimated the island’s small landed population.  Tarth needed a ruler, and unnatural as she was, Maester Hoth knew Lady Brienne would have to serve.  

****

Alysane knew that Lord Selwyn’s condition was not fatal.  She was no Maester, but she knew her Lord’s symptoms intimately.  She knew his heart ached and his bones reverberated with the boom of Braavosi drums.  She knew he lay awake each night and that he struggled to rise each morning.  Maester Hoth suspected a malignancy of the liver, but Alsy knew what troubled their great Lord was a malignancy of the heart.  His wife, his son and two of his daughters were dead. His island had been sacked and burnt.  His only remaining child was likely dead, and if she lived she was named a traitor, dishonored in the company of the Kingslayer.  His world of private sorrow was overflowing and he could not imagine a reason to continue.

****

Alys understood.  Her mother was twelve years dead, her father no more than a bad memory.  Gerin was dead, and his betrothed, Lucina, wore her mourning clothes with pride, while Alys scrubbed her simple shift with lime each night to wash the scent of him from her life.  The past months had seen her grow pale and gaunt.  If anyone had been paying attention, they might have diagnosed her with the same affliction as Lord Selwyn.  No one was paying attention of course: anyone who might have was dead.

****

Tarth waited with baited breath for the return of Lady Brienne.  Alys remembered watching her when they were both children and wondering if the God’s had gotten it wrong when they made her a girl.  When her Lady rode into the courtyard at Evenfall and dismounted without waiting for her horse to come to a halt, her armor clanking as she landed, Alys realized the God’s had gotten it right when they made her a Knight (for she was, knighted by King Renly Baratheon himself, and if the rumors were true, knighted again for good measure by the Kingslayer at the Eyrie).  Brienne’s companions followed behind her, a young man no more than fifteen, and a shabbily dressed Knight.  The stable boy, Damion rushed forward and Brienne thrust her reins into his hand as she strode, tall and strong and fast into the castle without glancing at her assembled staff of the men who travelled with her.

****

Alysane located Lady Brienne in her father’s chambers.  Brienne knelt at her father’s bedside and the pair spoke in hushed, emotional voices.  It did not take a Maester to see that Lord Selwyn’s health was already much improved - he was sitting up and the color had returned to his cheeks.  Aware that she was responsible for Lady Brienne’s bath and preparation for supper, Alys waited outside Lord Selwyn’s rooms.  

****

What felt like hours later, the door opened and Brienne slipped out.  The tall girl closed the door behind her softly and rested her head against the wood for a moment.  Her eyes closed, Alysane heard her whisper:  "I never should have left him."

****

“My Lady?”  Not wishing to eavesdrop further, Alys made her presence known.  “Your guests have been shown to their quarters and are expected at supper.  May I draw you a bath?”  

****

Brienne’s head snapped in her direction, and Alys saw for the first time the violent scar that marred her face.  

****

“Fetch me paper and a quill,” Brienne said, her voice thick with emotion.  “I need to write to Jon Snow.”

 

****

* * *

 

****

Years later, writing another letter to the Hand of the Queen, it is immediately clear to Alysane that Lord Tyrion does not truly require her help.  

****

"I never know how to address him." He ponders aloud, feigning indecision.  "I can't call him Lord Snow, but he doesn't care for the Targaryen name, and he’s not legitimized as a Stark, strangely enough."

****

"My Lord Hand?" She suggests, playing along.   

****

"An inspired suggestion!  I see why Jaime's so keen to keep you to himself.  Beyond the obvious reason, of course." Lord Tyrion has a particular way of speaking as if he is mid-jape with himself; she never feels privy to the complete conversation.  

****

He dictates the brief missive without further commentary.  As she sets down her quill, he pushes a glass of wine into her hand.  

****

"Relax, my lady."  He has a kind face, if not a kind tongue, and Alysane is more comfortable with him than most members of the household.

****

Compliant, she takes a sip of wine.  It is heavy, but pleasant.

****

"This vintage came to us from Sunspear.  Our cellars are full to the brim with it, so do not be shy.  I suppose they mean it to serve as reparation for Myrcella's ear."

****

How is she to respond to that?

****

"It is pleasing, my Lord."

****

“And where do you come to us from, Alsyane?  May I call you Alysane?”  

****

She nods her acquiescence and takes another sip of wine.  Gerin, who taught her to read, called her Alysa.  Her mother called her Aly.  The rest of the world calls her _girl_ or _you_ or _pretty thing_ or worse.  Here at Casterly Rock, it is clear no one knows what to call her, although Lord Tyrion is the first to ask.  His brother, she notices, avoids calling her anything at all.  

****

Brienne called her Alys.  She wonders if Lord Jaime knew, he might do the same?

****

“I am from Tarth, my Lord.  I was a handmaiden at Evenfall Hall.”  

****

She sees a flicker of recognition in his eyes.  She does not know how much Lord Jaime has shared with his brother about his friendship with  Brienne.  When he does not press the subject, she guesses that he does not know how much Lord Jaime has shared with _her_.  

****

“And how did you find your way from the Stormlands to here?” he asks conversationally.  It is hard to tell, with a man of his intelligence, if his questions seem pointed because his mind is so sharp, or because she is being interrogated.  

****

“I found myself without a position and with little to hold me on Tarth.  West seemed as good a direction as any.”  It is a strange lie and it creeps along her hairline like a spider, stretches like a skin that does not quite fit.  

****

“You did not long to stroll the warm streets of Volantis or Braavos?

****

“After the Golden Company ravaged Tarth, there were few of us left with any desire to see more of the east.”  

****

“Of course, I apologize.”  He pauses for a moment, lost in thought.  She has seen that same look on Lord Jaime’s face, on Brienne’s.  His expression somewhere between horror and longing, she knows he is remembering the war.  

****

“So, tell me,” Tyrion’s face is bright and focused again, a small smile playing at his lips.  “How did a handmaiden from Tarth learn to read and write?”

****

Lord Jaime has never asked this most obvious question.  He must not think of her when she is not in his sight.  He must not notice her when she is.  

****

“Lord Selwyn’s page, Gerin, taught me,” she tells him.  She does not bother to lie or explain away the kindness.  The implication is the truth:  Gerin took an interest in her, fell in love with her.  He was gentle and serious and good.  He died in the attack on the island, holding a sword in his hand for the first and last time in his life.  She mourns him still, but her grief is manageable.  He was not hers to lose.  

****

Lords and their wards may befriend baseborn girls, they may even kiss them in darkened halls, may bed them while the household sleeps, but they will never, ever marry them.  Her mother taught her that when she was just a little girl.  A hard lesson, but she never forgot and she has no regrets.  

****

“How fortuitous for Jaime,” Tyrion says with a small smile.  

****

Alysane takes another sip of wine, letting the Dornish red sit on her tongue to keep her from speaking.  How to say:  He never even asked if I wanted to be his page.  Or:  I came to Casterly Rock to understand how a woman could love him so much that she married another man, that she died alone with his name on her lips.   I never realized that loving him is as easy as breathing.  

****

“Did you know the Lady Brienne?” Tyrion asks and she knows that his curiosity has gotten the better of him.  

****

“I did, my Lord.”  She is not sure she can say more.  

****

“My brother seems to have been... attached to the Lady, although, I confess, I have not courage enough to treat with him on the subject.” The Warden of the West pauses and Alysane glances at him over her wine glass.  He frowns and seems to struggle for words.  She can imagine his confusion.    

****

“Brienne owed her life to Lord Jaime,” Alysane offers as an explanation.  “And he owed his to her.”

****

“Does he speak to you of her?”  He seems surprised, and she hears a concern in his voice that she does not entirely understand.  

****

“Only once.”   _She saved me in more ways than I can count._  

****

“Do you know the terms of my family’s pardon?”  he asks after a pause, and she is thrown again by this sharp shift in conversation.  .

****

“Yes, my Lord.  Lord Tommen and Lady Myrcella will not inherit Casterly Rock.  Lord Jaime has no part in your father’s inheritance beyond what you see fit to dispense to him.  He is Lord of this household until his death, but he does not serve as Warden of the West,” she lists.  “And he cannot travel without dispensation from the Queen.”

****

“Those are the terms of Jaime, Myrcella and Tommen’s freedom.  It is a common mistake,” Tyrion tells her, but it is not an admonition.  "Their pardon - their lives - required a higher price.”  He meets her eyes and she dreads what he is about to say before she even has time to imagine it.  “When Daenerys Targaryen had our sister burned alive for treason, murder and attempted filicide, Jaime tied Cersei to the stake.  She could have used her dragons to start the fire, but instead Jaime lit the first flame. To this day I cannot decide if our Queen appreciates the enormity of what my brother did to save his children’s lives. ”

****

Alysane cannot find the words to respond.  What can she say?  This family, this broken, strange, powerful family runs deeper than any river she has ever crossed.  Beneath their love, hatred, and beneath that hatred, a stronger, fuller love.  

****

“Jaime loved Cersei, loved every bone in her body,” Tyrion continues. “He worshipped her.  He believed that he knew her better than he knew himself.  But where Jaime was steadfast and loyal, Cersei was fickle and her blood was like quiksilver.  She loved him, yes, but she would have loved Rhaegar Targaryen more.  She might have loved Robert Baratheon more, had he been a different kind of man.  When Vargo Hoat took Jaime’s hand and Lady Brienne restored his honor, Cersei recoiled from him.  So very shallow, our sweet sister.”

****

It is hard to hear this and she wishes she could ask him to stop.   It is burden enough to know that when Lord Jaime looks at her, he sees Brienne.  It is worse to think that when he looks at her and sees Brienne, he longs for Cersei.  

****

“I do not tell you this to... I cannot pretend to understand the relationship between Lady Brienne and my brother, but I do believe that the damage Cersei inflicted on him still haunts him today.  At fourteen, my brother was not afraid of anything.  If he wanted something, he took it.  I think Cersei robbed him of that certainty.  I suspect that is why your Lady died alone while my brother haunts his castle like a ghost.”  

****

Alysane nods.  She never anticipated the hesitancy she sees in Lord Jaime’s eyes.  

****

“And I tell you this, Alysane, so that you may serve my brother well as his page, so that you may understand him as your employer and feel at home here.  But I worry that a girl as young and pretty as you, well... You cannot save him.”

****

She nods as if she understands, but she does not.  She wants to ask him to explain himself, to retrace the path of this conversation and tell her how he arrived at this almost inexplicable conclusion.

****

Her head is spinning as they part for the evening.  She knows it is not the wine, but the words he used:    _You cannot save him._

 

* * *

 

****

The raven arrived mid morning while Brienne was in the practice yard with her squire, Podrick Payne. Alysane had heard the news in the servant’s quarters: the Kingslayer had been apprehended.  He was being held in the Red Keep, awaiting the arrival of the Dragon Queen and facing certain death at her hands.  

****

Alysane was carrying linens to the washrooms when she spotted Brienne barrelling through the courtyard towards the stables, Hyle Hunt close on her heels.  Neither party noticed her, tucked beneath the eaves.  

****

“The Hand of the Queen ordered you not to go!”  Hyle shouted at her as he caught up with her.

****

“The Others take the Hand,” Brienne shouted back.  Hunt grabbed her and she shoved him, the smaller man falling to the ground with the force of her push.  “And The Others take you if you try to stop me.”

****

“This is madness!  You’ll be imprisoned alongside him, and for what?” he shouted after her retreating back.  

****

“Better imprisoned than here, useless.”  Alysane had never seen Brienne so animated outside of the practice yard.

****

“If you go, they will say it is true, that you are the Kingslayer’s whore.”  Hyle spat the accusation as he rose, and Alysane half expected Brienne to turn and strike him again.  Instead the lady stilled with her back to him.  

****

“I don’t care what they say or think, Ser Hyle,” she said.  “He needs me.”

****

“He needs you to stay here and let him fight this battle alone.  His sister is imprisoned for treason, his children are held hostage.  He went to Kings Landing to die for them and you knew it and you let him go.”  Hyle moved to stand between her and the stables, between her and the man she aimed to reach.

****

“I should never have left him,” Brienne said softly, her voice catching, and immediately Alysane recalled the day of her Lady’s return and the words she had whispered into the solid oak of her father’s chamber door.

****

Ser Hyle said nothing for a moment and she held her breath, unsure which, if either of them, had won the argument.

****

“Marry me,”  Hyle said quietly.  Alysane was sure she had misheard him.  “He is as good as dead, Brienne.  Marry me and let him go.”

****

“Hyle...”

****

“Let him go Brienne.  Your father needs you.  Your island needs you.”

****

It was emotional blackmail.  Still Brienne did not back down.

****

“I owe him my life.”

****

Alysane saw a change in Ser Hyle’s demeanor.  

****

“Do you think it is you he wants to see?  That it is your face he dreams of?”  He asked coldly.  “Don’t make me laugh.  It is Cersei that he wants, Cersei he longs for.  That is who your honorable Ser Jaime calls out for, his own sister, you stupid girl.  Not you.  Never you.”

****

Brienne was unfazed.

****

“I don’t care who he _longs_ for.  This isn’t a song, Ser Hyle.  He is trying to martyr himself and I can’t let him.”

****

“This whole fucking time, these past fucking months,” he erupted,  “All I have heard out of you is how bloody honorable Ser Jaime is, how brave and how loyal and how changed.  They are his children, Brienne, and you would have him abandon them?  You would name him kinslayer.”  He paused, the fight gone out of him.  When he continued, his voice was plaintive.  “Please Brienne, let him be honorable now.”

****

Brienne did not answer immediately.  Her shoulders slumped and Alysane could tell that his last plea had resonated with her far better than his marriage proposal or harsh words ever could.

****

“I swore an oath...”  Her voice was raw.  

****

“You cannot save him,” Hunt said simply and relaxed his stance.  When Brienne did not move to push past him, he nodded, looking almost contrite.  He raised his hand to Brienne’s shoulder and gave it a quick, supportive squeeze.  “He would want you to live.”  With that he strode off, his footsteps echoing against the silence of the courtyard.

****

Brienne stood still, a statue.

****

Alysane unconsciously mimicked her, linens forgotten at her feet.  Brienne loved the Kingslayer.  Loved him enough to die for him, would rather sacrifice that same love than compromise his honor.  She felt as if she were stepping onto a boat for the first time:  that sense that everything she had known about the earth must be relearned.  

****

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters to go.


	5. They sicken of the calm who know the storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”  
> ― Dorothy Parker, Sunset Gun

* * *

 

 JAIME

* * *

 

 

Six months after he hires her, Jaime encounters Alysane in the back hallway between the stables and the servants’ quarters.  

 

“You sleep here?” he asks, incredulous.  He may be just the slightest bit drunk.  

 

Which is entirely Bronn’s fault.    

 

“I do, my Lord.”

 

Her hair is down, coiling over one shoulder.  She is wearing a simple linen shift.  He is immediately aware of how they would look if someone came upon them:  the Lord in the servants’ halls, looming over his dark, pretty page as she stands in her nightclothes.  

 

“What do you mean, ‘I do, my Lord?” he asks, suddenly frustrated.  “You should not be in the servants’ quarters.”

 

She gives him a look that suggests that age, the war, lost love, and limb, and time, have finally caught up with him.  He does not appreciate his mental faculties being assessed by the twenty-five year old girl he pays to write his letters.

 

“I sleep here,” she explains as if speaking with a particularly slow-witted child.  “In the servants' quarters.  Because I am a servant.”

 

“But you’re not... Don’t you know where Dewan sleeps?”

 

She frowns and shoots him a look somewhere between hurt and horrified.

 

“I do not know what kind of girl you think I am, Ser, or what Lord Tyrion has told you, but I would never...”

 

“No.  No.  I can promise you that I do not think... No.”  He breathes out a laugh.  It sounds more like a rasp.  Whatever happened to the Jaime Lannister who could make women understand him with a smile and a wink?   “Dewan sleeps in the main wing, on the same floor as Tyrion,” he explains.

 

“Oh,” is all she says.  

 

“Because he is not a servant,” he continues.  “He is a member of the household.  As are you.”

 

Her eyes widen and he sees a blush creeping down her neck to the ties of her gown.

 

It is a very warm evening.  

 

“I did not realize,” she says simply.  She seems, if anything, embarrassed.  

 

“Neither did I.”  Another thought strikes him like a blade.  “We do pay you, don’t we?”

 

She nods her head and he relaxes.

 

“May I ask how much?”  

 

“Two dragons per month.”  Impossible to tell if that is a lot or a little.  

 

“And is that sufficient?”

 

Oh, but this is awkward.  He sees her every day, relies on her ability to handle the most complex financial transactions and hold confidential the most serious of political matters.  He has never once imagined her outside of his solar or the library.  Where does she eat her meals?  Does she require a day off?  Or longer to to visit her people?

 

Mother, does she have people?  She must.  Parents?  Siblings?  A lover?

 

“Yes, my Lord.  More than sufficient.  I am very grateful.”

 

“Who handles your payment?”   If it’s not him, it must be...

 

“Lord Tyrion.”  Of course.

 

“And he has never addressed this living situation?”  

 

“No, my Lord.  Perhaps he did not think of it.”

 

Jaime would wager his left hand that his brother has thought of it.  There must be a reason he has left her among the servants.  

 

“Do you like it here?”  he asks.  

 

“My room is comfortable,” she tells him.  “I do not want for anything.  If it would serve you better to have me closer to you...”

 

_Gods._

 

“I meant... at Casterly Rock.  Are you happy here?”  Anything to get that image from his mind.  The wine has left him prone to flights of fancy, it would seem.  

 

“Yes, my Lord.  Of course.”  She sounds sincere, but again he has lost the trick of reading her.  

 

“And you are happy to be a page?”  The question feels beneath him, but he is going through the motions now, and these are inquiries someone needs to make.  

 

“It is an honor.”  Not quite a response.  

 

“I never did ask you if you wanted it.”  So selfish now, since Brienne.  

 

Before Brienne.

 

 _With_ Brienne.  

 

“You did not.”  There is a small, sardonic smile on her lips.  Obviously she took notice, then.  What a grand old Lord she must have thought him, dispensing favors without any thought to how they would be received.

 

“I apologize.”  Not a phrase he is comfortable or familiar with, even now that his life is one great apology.  

 

“Lords do not usually ask handmaidens about their happiness,” she assures him.  “It would have been most unusual.”

 

“Your promotion is most unusual,” he reminds her.  Looking at her here in the halflight, she is a stranger to him.  

 

“Yes, Ser.”  Deferential, as always.  “Thank you.”  

 

Nothing left to say, he takes a good long look at her.  

 

She is trapped.  He has not dismissed her, and it seems the confidence she wears in daylight is a uniform she sheds at night.  He leans in, just a touch, and hears her sharp intake of breath.  Intoxicating.  He remembers the early days travelling with Brienne, when he would deliberately intimidate her with his physicality, his maleness.

 

He fights a smirk, enjoying the delicious widening of her eyes as she notices, for the first time, her state of undress, his tall, broad presence in the narrow hallway.  It is all instinct and it sets his blood humming through his veins.  Maidens are the most fun...

 

But she isn’t a maiden, is she?

 

“Tell me, what hasn’t my brother told me?” he purrs, remembering her earlier protests.  His voice holds a question and a promise he does not quite intend, but the wine has taken hold of him.  

 

The palm of her hand connects with his cheek and he stumbles backwards, shocked.

 

“Two gold dragons a month is not enough to buy my degradation,” she spits.  “I’m sure you could find a whore for that price in Lannisport but you won’t find one here."

 

She turns on her heel and stalks down the hall.  Hand on his stinging cheek, he hears a door slam.  

 

Immediately he wants to punch something.  Someone.  He considers Bronn.  The sellsword is probably still stumbling around the stables, harassing the horses and drinking that Dornish red Tyrion is so fond of.  He clenches his left fist, feels his nails dig into his palm.  

 

No.  Bronn would fight back and Jaime does not think he can handle another loss.  Stranger knows what just happened with Alysane.  He barely noticed the girl until tonight, and somehow he has managed to compromise them both and probably terminate their working relationship.  

 

Tyrion will love this.  

 

Connington, that’s who he needs.  A man he can hit, hard and true, and watch him stumble and fall, knowing he deserved the beating.

 

* * *

 

  
Brienne dragged him away from the campfire by his stump, leaving a bemused Hyle Hunt and a dozing Podrick Payne in their wake.  

 

“What do you mean, ‘When I dealt with Connington,’?” she ground out when they were beyond earshot.

 

“I dealt with him.”  She did not appreciate his glib tone or the smirk on his face, but he could not help it.  It was delightful.

 

 _She_ was.

 

“How?”  He could practically hear her teeth gnashing.  

 

“Oh, you want details!  Much obliged.  I punched him.  In the face.  With my right paw here.  Turns out it’s useful for more than looking pretty.”  He waved his golden hand in her face.  Her furious, confounded face.  

 

“Why would you do that?” The suspicion in her voice would break the heart of a kinder man.

 

“He deserved it.”

 

Her frown was as deep as the scars on her cheek.  

 

She opened her  mouth, then closed it again.  He recalled the days when he had believed her stupid.

 

“I worry I was remiss,” he teased. “You appear excessively troubled by my violence against Red Ronnet.  Tell me, is he a good friend of yours?”

 

She flushed scarlet.  

 

“A paramour, perhaps?” He knew, knew, he was being cruel, but something about her downcast eyes and red cheeks was raising a fury in him.  

 

“You mock me, Ser.”  It was clear she regretted dragging him here to this clearing, with Hunt and Payne too far to provide distraction or deflect her embarrassment.  

 

“Forgive me,  my Lady. I know Ronnet Connington is not your lover, for are you not the most famed maid in the Seven Kingdoms?”

 

He had pushed too far.  Her blush deepened into anger and he saw the flash of hurt in her bright blue eyes.  

 

It stung like the prick of a blade through skin.

 

He did not want to explain himself, to tell her that she was worth more than the men at Renly’s camp would ever know, more than any person he had ever met.  He did not want to be the man who restored her confidence in men: he was perhaps the least equipped for the task.

 

“Connington was asking for a beating.  He was disrespectful and downright incorrect.  I hit him and I dismissed him.”  

 

She blinked at him, eyes wary, her brows knitted together.  It would be nothing to reach his remaining hand out to smooth that brow, to brush her straw-like hair from her forehead.  After a year on the road together, after the baths at Harrenhal, and the fevered nights on the Quiet Isle, it could be an action of brotherhood, of comradery.  

 

“We should gather some more firewood,” he said, breaking their uneasy silence. “Your squire looks as if he might perish at any moment.”  

 

He turned and walked away, left hand curling into a fist at his side.   _Coward.  Fool._

 

“Ser Jaime?” she called after him.  He turned; she had not moved, her feet planted firmly on the earth.  “What did he... What was he wrong about?”  

 

She did not want him to know about the bet.  Some part of her was wishing and hoping that Ronnet had spilled some other secret, had slighted Cersei or his children or his swordsmanship.  It was written on her face, how badly she wished it to be so.

 

“He told me there were no sapphires on Tarth,” Jaime replied, levelling his gaze and pinning her in place with his stare. “A mistake no man who has looked into your eyes could make.”  

 

She was like a very tall, very broad, deer caught by torchlight.  Again, he itched to touch her.  Her strong arms, her muscled shoulders.  Her puckered cheek or her scarred neck.  

 

“You should get back to the fire,” he said, turning away again.  “It is not safe.”

 

He walked deeper into the woods.  After a moment, he heard her stir and he held his breath, hoping she might follow him away from the others, as he had followed her here on this godforsaken mission.   

 

As he heard her move back in the direction of the campfire, the ghost of his right hand itched:  to hit Connington, to stroke her face.  

 

A memory and a wish.  Both gone in the mist of his released breath.

 

* * *

 

 

He will kill Tyrion

 

Why not?  He is already named kinslayer, they both are.  Queen Daenerys would put him to death, but that is long overdue.

 

“How the tables have turned, brother.” Tyrion is gleeful. “If I did not know you so well, I would infer from this tableau that you spent the evening in your cups with Bronn, and the latter half of the night harassing members of the staff.”  

 

Jaime opens his eyes and attempts a level stare.  The reality is more of a grimace.  It truly is infernally bright in his chambers and Tyrion is triumphant in the sunlight.  He must have had the maid open his curtains.

 

“What would our father say?”

 

“He would tell you to keep your sorry excuse for a nose out of it.”  His head is throbbing and he knows if he sits up too quickly, he will lose the contents of his stomach.  This is how his siblings lived?  No wonder his sister lost her mind.  No wonder Tyrion is such a prickly little weasel.

 

“Harsh words, brother.”  Tyrion sounds far from troubled.  “Do you know Myrcella’s maid found your page in tears in the servant’s quarters last night?”

 

Of course Tyrion got to her first.

 

“This is why you torture me?  A story from a girl with ideas above her station?” _I know, Brienne.  I know.  I will be better.  Tomorrow, when my head is not about to fall off my shoulders, when I can see beyond my fingers, when the floor is stable and sure again._

 

“There was no story.  Alysane would not reveal the cause of her distress.  The maid took the matter to the head housemaid.  The household is convinced your page is carrying the child of a local merchant or a stableboy.”

 

Better that than the truth.

 

“What is the girl doing in the servant’s quarters, anyway?”  A distraction.  “She tells me you handle her payment but not her lodging.  Why did you leave her there?”

 

A raised eyebrow.  If he could just stand up, he would punch that knowing look right off his brother’s face.  

 

“I thought it was obvious,”  Tyrion says.

 

“It isn’t.”

 

“I was hoping to avoid this very issue.”  Now it is Jaime’s turn to raise an eyebrow.  “She is young, pretty, and baseborn.  You gave her a position reserved for wards.  Male wards.”

 

Jaime wishes he had Cersei’s gift of communicating utter disdain with just a narrowing of the eyes.  

 

“My reputation is hardly worth saving.”  The only person who ever tried is dead.

 

“No, but hers is.” Always the champion of hopeless causes.  

 

“You were protecting her from me?” He does his best to inject incredulity into his voice, but memories of his abysmal attempt at... what? from the previous night are eating at his conscience.  

 

“I was protecting her from rumors and insinuations.  I did not believe you had any designs on the girl.  Now, I am not as certain.”

 

“Nothing happened.”  He wasn’t even trying anything.  Just playing at being Jaime Lannister, rather than this pathetic, crippled, old man.

 

“Jaime, I know you are unhappy.  I know this is not the life you imagined for yourself.  I know this is not what you fought for.”  

 

Who is Tyrion to lecture him about happiness?  

 

“But this folly with Alysane...”

 

“Enough!”  Jaime snaps, sitting up, his nausea forgotten.  “Enough, Tyrion.”

 

The shorter man stills.  Jaime breathes in.  Breathes out.  Thinks of Brienne.  Breathes in.

 

“It is not what you think it is.  It is not anything.  There was a small misunderstanding last night when I discovered that she lives with the servants.  I will take care of it.”

 

“See that you do, brother.  I would hate for you to lose her because you did not realize how valuable she is.”

 

The words cut, and he can tell by Tyrion’s tone that they are intended to.  

 

“How is your wife?” he asks.  His brother’s lips quirk down as he frowns and Jaime knows he has hit his target.  The git deserves it, lobbing Brienne at him like a jar of wildfyre.  

 

“Fix it, Jaime.”  

 

Left alone, he remembers standing in the woods as Brienne’s footsteps grew fainter.  He remembers watching her and Hunt and Payne ride off into the snow.  He remembers giving her Oathkeeper and dismissing her from the White Tower.  He remembers riding out of Harrenhal and leaving her to Vargo Hoat.  

 

He set his own sister aflame and Tyrion is worried that he might damage the reputation of a baseborn girl from an insignificant island?  He let Brienne die alone of a disease that no war or victory could overcome, and he feels guilty about an ill-timed flirtation in a dark hallway?

 

She would call this redemption.  She would encourage these concerns:  propriety and honor and kindness and guilt and sacrifice.  He thinks it would make her smile, seeing him like this, torn up over petty squabbles with his brother and concerns for his daughter’s future, and the feelings of a paid member of his household.  

 

She is not here.  She will never smile again.  She is dead and gone and it does not matter if he kisses Alysane or kills her.  Brienne will never know.  

 

He remembers the widening of Alysane’s eyes as he crowded the narrow hallway.

 

She loved Brienne.  She cared for her when Jaime could and did not.  She came to Casterly Rock because of her, because of what Brienne felt for him.  

 

And he threw it in her face, made her feel cheap and buyable.  Took every ounce of respect he had afforded to her and stamped all over it with his clumsy, drunken nonsense.

 

How to say:  I was trying to be the man I was, the man I need to be to live without her.  

 

All he can do is find her better rooms.  All he can do is look her in the eye and apologize and ask her not to leave.  All he can do is regret her before she is even gone because losing women is what Jaime Lannister - the old Jaime and the new, old Jaime - does best.  

 


	6. There is no wind that always blows a storm

Lord Tyrion summons her a little after dawn. Her hair is still damp from her morning bath, and she braids it hastily as she hurries to his solar.  She passes Lord Jaime in the halls.  He glides away from her gracefully, leaving enough space for five pages to pass by.  

 

It is six days since she last attended him.

 

“Good morning, Alysane.  I trust you slept well in your new accommodations?” Tyrion is all smiles.  He offers her a breakfast pastry and motions for her to sit.  

 

“Yes, my Lord.”  She must be the only page in the history of the realm to strike her master and receive a four-poster bed wide enough for three, an armoire, and her own bathtub.

 

“Now you understand why lords and ladies loll about in their chambers and never do any work.  I apologize for summoning you so early, but the Queen has requested that I travel to Winterfell to treat with the Northern Lords on her behalf.”  

 

Winterfell.  Where Lord Jaime and Brienne returned Sansa Stark to her family home.  Where Peter Baelish was tried and punished.  Where Brienne defended Jaime against the Northerners who wanted his head.

 

She must wear her interest on her face, for Lord Tyrion seems amused.

 

“You seem far more excited at the prospect of that Northern tundra than I,” he teases.  “Perhaps I should have you journey in my stead.”

 

“I do not imagine the lords would consider me a suitable substitute.” The word hits too close to home, she wishes she had not said it.

 

“I think you would like my wife, she has your same manner of disguising truths with politeness.”

 

She has met Lady Sansa, of course, but none of them think to ask.

 

She wonders if Lord Tyrion knows that she struck Lord Jaime.  Not quite the paragon of polite behavior.

 

In her defense, neither was he.

 

In his defense: everything.  

 

“What truth am I disguising?” she asks innocently.

 

“That you would prefer to journey to Winterfell than to summer here.”  He appraises her.  She tries not to blink under his inspection.

 

They are interrupted.

 

“What can you possibly want now, Tyrion?  That bloody page of yours does not have the faintest idea how to...”  Lord Jaime sees her and stops.  If the Lannisters had the complexion for blushing, she suspects his cheeks would be red.  

 

“Jaime, excellent.  Alysane and I were just discussing the plans for my journey to Winterfell.  You will need to wrestle the Western lords while I am away.”

“Are you finally going to do your duty by your wife, then?”  Jaime asks.  He does not look at Alys.  She wishes she could keep her eyes off him.

 

“I am doing my duty by my Queen.” Tyrion is always prickly on the subject of Sansa Stark.  “She could hardly send you.”

 

Jaime blinks.   

 

“I rescued that girl from Peter Baelish’s bed,” Jaime reminds him.  

 

“Was that before or after you ran your sword through her mother’s neck?”

 

“That thing was no longer Catelyn Stark, it was an abomination of Stannis’s Red God.”

 

“So your motivations were religious?  Or was it that your precious Brienne’s life was in the balance and you figured, what’s another Stark?  You’d already crippled her brother.”

 

A dangerous pause.

 

“Do you truly believe I am the reason your wife does not want you in her bed?”  When this conversation tipped from jibes to blows she does not know.  

 

“I would not blame her if you were.”  

 

“How easily you forget your own crimes, brother.  And your own deficiencies.”  

 

“Shall we compare deficiencies Jaime?  I have never wrapped my identity up in my physical perfection.  Scarred or not, I am still the man I always was, which is more than either of us can say for you.”

 

“My lords, shall I call for some tea?”  She would suggest wine, but the scullery maids complain that Lord Jaime has been sending back his glasses untouched.

 

They ignore her, challenging each other with glares and wide stances, like a pair of wild  boars.

 

She slips out, finds a maid and orders the refreshment.  Unwilling to further intrude on the brothers, she leans against the wall and closes her eyes.  There are days when they seem perfectly matched and she envies their easy banter and shared history.  And then there are days like today, when she cannot bear to watch them tear each other apart.  

 

She knows the stories, their histories, she heard them from Brienne, from travellers on the roads, from the maids in the kitchens.  Her mother once told her:  highborns have a peculiar kind of love, a notion of loyalty that transcends morality.  Their rules are different, their motivations strange, their stakes are higher.  Alysane is sure she did not understand until Casterly Rock.  

 

Bertha returns and Alys straightens her back, ignoring the judgmental sweep of the younger woman’s eyes over her flat belly.  Rumors of her alleged “situation” have not been easily quenched.

 

Balancing the pitcher of boiling water on her left arm, she takes the proffered tray of honey and milk in her right.  She waits for Bertha to open the solar door, but the maid shoots her a final hard look and saunters away.

 

Wonderful.

 

She leans into the door, listening for any hint that the argument is still going.  Hearing nothing, she attempts to turn the handle with her elbow.  As her arm gains purchase, the door swings open and the pitcher, the tray, the milk and the honey spill spectacularly over her, Lord Jaime, and the floor.  

 

The water burns her and she leaps back.  She pulls at her dress, trying to keep the scalding material from her skin.  She hears Tyrion call for a maid, and she knows she should begin clearing the mess, should tear the burning fabric from her body, but Lord Jaime’s hand is on her arm and his touch is cool.

 

“Come,” he says, guiding her away from the room.  She casts a worried look over her shoulder at the spilled pitcher and delf.  “It is not your concern,” he tells her.  “Tyrion will have a maid take care of it.”

 

The pain is raw and blinding.  

 

He takes her to Maester Llorn, who dresses the burns on her hands and presses a salve into Lord Jaime’s outstretched hand with instructions for use.  She wants to laugh, giddy with shock.  Does Maester Llorn think Lord Jaime is listening?  Does he imagine that he will be the one administering the medicine?  

 

She does not draw attention to the burns across her chest, where her soaked gown has clung to her breasts.  

 

Lord Jaime leads her to her room.  It is the longest she has been in his presence since she struck him.  It is the closest she has ever been to his person.

 

She has not spoken since she thanked Bertha for the tray and the maid ignored her.  Does it count if she speaks and no one listens?  Lord Tyrion and Lord Jaime did not pay attention to her offer of tea, either.  Perhaps the last thing she truly articulated was her interest in Winterfell and the cold, soothing, North.

 

“Shall I call a maid to help you with your dress?”  She shakes her head.  What maid here would help her?  “Rest,” he says.  He is so gentle:  his voice, the light pressure of his gaze.  “I will not have need of you today.”

 

“You never do.”  She claps a bandaged hand over her mouth.

 

Something like a smile ghosts across his features and he reaches up and tugs her hand from her face.  

 

“Do not censor yourself,” he chides. “Remember the terms of your employment.”  

 

All she can recall is the feel of his fingertips on her jaw, the deep green of his eyes as he took everything she was, everything she knew about life and changed the rules.

 

“Am I still in your employ?”  Almost a whisper.  She drops her eyes.  Remembers herself.  Meets his gaze.

 

He frowns, confused or feigning confusion.  Surely a man as powerful as he does not wear his feelings on his face, surely some of this must be art?  

 

“You do not call for me.  Since you gave me these rooms,” she explains.

 

The unspoken words flutter about them like birds.

 

He pauses, breaks her gaze and stares into the solid oak of her door.

 

“I must --.”  He sounds pained.  “My behavior was regrettable and my apology insufficient.  I have behaved as a child.”  

 

“You never gave me leave to apologize to you.”  They are so close now, she can see the flecks of Lannister gold in his eyes.  “I struck you my Lord, and I had no right.  You ought to dismiss me.”

 

He raises an eyebrow.

 

“Do you wish to leave my service?”  

 

She thinks of Winterfell, of Lady Sansa, whose hair she brushed when she visited Evenfall Hall during Brienne’s illness.  She thinks of drifts of cool, wet snow against her blistered skin.

 

“No, my Lord.”

 

“I am relieved.  You are -- Tyrion and I rely on you a great deal.”  He gestures at her hands.  “Perhaps too much.”

 

He assumes she was overworked or overeager.  She cannot tell him she is spurned by his staff because of tears he caused.

 

“Thank you.”  She wants to add “my Lord” but stops herself.  

 

“Will you require assistance with your burns?”  The look on his face would be described as nervous on another man.

 

“I will manage.”

 

“I wish --”

 

(Her mind finishes the thought.

 

\-- you would let me help you.

 

\-- you would leave.

 

\-- Cersei were alive.

 

\-- Brienne were here.)

 

“-- you had not borne witness to the argument between my brother and I.  We should have better manners than to subject you to our quarrels.”  A self deprecating smile.  “Of course, we are both a little short on courtesy.”

 

How to respond without trivializing the truths they flung at each other, the history in these walls?  Too often they leave her speechless.  Soon she will forget how to speak.

 

“I pray you do not judge us.”

 

The absurdity of the comment drags a response from her mouth.

 

“I am a servant, my Lord.  It is not my place to judge you.”

 

“You are not a servant.”

 

They both recoil slightly at the memory.   

 

“Even so, I am your page.  I cannot judge you.”

 

A long, heavy pause.  She feels the weight of his next phrase before he utters it.  Her heartbeat races in her raw, blistering chest.

 

“I pushed Brandon Stark from a tower window.”

 

She knows.  

 

“He saw me -- us, together.”  It is as if the name is caught in his throat.  “Cersei.  He cannot have been more than seven or eight years of age.  It -- he lost the use of his legs, which of course…” Another pause.  He forces the next words out of his mouth.  “I intended to kill him.”

 

Why tell her this?

 

The realization hurts hotter and harsher than any burn.

 

“You never spoke of this with Brienne.”  Her voice sounds sure in the empty hallway.

 

“I did not have the opportunity.”  Or the courage, she wagers. “Did she ever --?”  

 

“No.  Not of this.”  She feels old.  Ashen.

 

He opens his mouth to speak and something inside her snaps, like a thread pulled too tight.

 

“My Lord, I beg of you -- no more.”  The softness in his eyes spurs her forward.  “I am not Brienne.  I wish I could be, for you.  I wish she could have lived in my place, for now I see how much she had to live for.  But I am not her, and it wounds me to disappoint you.  I cannot give you her absolution.”

 

It is a monologue the likes of which she has not delivered since Gerin taught her the Blackfyre histories and had her recite them from memory.  

 

“I am truly sorry.”  She is.  Never, not even with Lucina, has she experienced the whole and complete envy she feels for Brienne.  His love is so loyal that it may shatter him.

 

He meets her eyes.  Her lungs contract.

 

“Alysane --.”

 

She has worn her name her whole life without hearing it spoken so:  as if the collection of sounds could encompass her soul.

 

“Thank you for your assistance, Lord Jaime.”  End this now, she thinks, before you cry.  Before you kiss him, and you both pretend that you are someone else.  Before you strike him again.

 

He reaches for her.  His hand on her arm is quick and insistent.  His eyes are not so gentle as before.  He looks, at last, the lion.

 

“Must all our conversations end in closed doors and echoing hallways?”  She recognizes now what Cersei must have seen, what she knows Brienne saw: the power in reserve, the ruthless strength of his perfect gaze.  

 

“Will you ever be able to speak to me without seeing her?”  This is a boldness she can only live to regret.  

 

“No.”

 

Still his hand is on her shoulder, anchoring her.  It is his stare that pins her in place.

 

“Is that so wrong?”  She has asked herself this a thousand times.  

 

“No, my Lord.”  He seems relieved.  How easily she forgets his limited and strange experience with women.  “I wish I could say that when I speak to you, I see her too.  I did, for a time.  But now, I see only you.”

 

The air has changed between them.  Even as she pushes him away, even as she admits to herself that she cannot stay in this hallway or in this house, she feels for the first time, his regard.

 

“And when you look at me, do you see what she saw?”  

 

“I do not recognize you, Ser, if that is what you mean.”  Weary, she shrugs off his hold on her arm and turns into her room, closing the door gently behind her without looking back.

 

_Come, curse me, or kiss me, or call me a liar_.  The pain in her chest swells and breaks over her like a wave.    

 

* * *

 

 

Brienne was barely lucid for more than an hour at a time.  Her husband was long since gone from Evenfall Hall, his goodbyes sounding strangled and sincere through her lady’s bedroom door.  Alysane might have felt for him, had he not left Brienne there alone.  Had he not taken her lands from her in marriage, and left to settle his debts elsewhere before claiming the island for himself.

 

But it was not Hyle Hunt that Brienne called for in her fever.  

 

Alys had written a letter to Lord Jaime Lannister of Casterly Rock telling him of her lady’s illness, but Brienne had made her swear not to send it.  That was weeks ago, when her mistress could still move about in the afternoons, when her mind was mostly her own between the flashes of pain and the crippling nausea.  With Brienne barely conscious, her brow slick with sweat and her breathing hard and harsh, Alysane could not bring herself to ask again.  Even if she sent it now, he could not make it in time.

 

“Alys--,” Brienne’s voice was hoarse and low.  “Where is my sword?  I must return to Pennytree, Ser Jaime cannot fight alone...”  

 

This was a common imagining, a nightmare that Alys had overheard even before the illness.  

 

“Ser Jaime is at Casterly Rock,” she told her quietly.  “He is safe.  Lady Stoneheart is dead.  Winter is over.”

 

Brienne’s face contorted in pain or confusion.  She refused milk of the poppy, even then.  

 

“I must go,” Brienne gasped.  “I swore to him...”

 

“He is safe,” she repeated, wiping the older girl’s brow with a damp cloth.  “He bids you rest until you are healed.”  This was a fabrication she hated, but it was the only assurance Brienne would take.

 

“I told him I would go.”  There were tears in her eyes.  

 

“Is it true that Ser Jaime was the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms before he lost his hand?” Alys asked soothingly to distract her.  Brienne nodded.  “And that you trained him with his left hand on your journey to the Vale and later in the North?”

 

“He -- never beat me,” Brienne coughed.  “He could have.”

 

“He was so brave in the Vale,” Alys reminded her.  “When Sandor Clegane snatched Lady Sansa from your grasp, thinking Jaime was returning her to his sister, Ser Jaime did not falter.  He held his oath more precious than his own life, and fought the Hound while you secured Sansa with Podrick Payne.”

 

Her lady’s breathing was softer now and her erratic heartbeat had slowed.  

 

“And remember in the North, when he fought through an onslaught of wights to reach your side after your horse was slain?”  The stories came so easily to her, so accustomed was she to tales of Ser Jaime Lannister’s bravery.  

 

So hard not to ask:  Why did you let him leave your life?  Why did you not follow him?  Why stay here, on this island, in this life, when you could have been with him?  

 

“He saved my life...” Brienne said, softly, tears falling from her eyes.

 

Alys felt her heart break in two.  Yes, Ser Jaime had saved Brienne at Harrenhaal, at Pennytree, at the Gates of the Moon, at the Wall.  He had fought off attackers, guarded her back and aided in her rescue.  He had risked his life and limb for her, had followed her East and North even as his own family wilted in Kings Landing.  

 

But he could not save her now.  Death had come in a form that no man or Knight or Maester could prevent.  

 

“Alys--.”  A convulsion shooked Brienne and she grimaced in pain, closing her eyes and melting into the bed beneath her once the tremors subsided.  

 

“Rest, my Lady.  I will be here.”  She wiped her brow once more, letting the damp cloth rest against her fevered forehead, letting her fingers trace the frown-lines in her lady’s face.  Her letter to Lord Jaime sat unsent in her pocket, the paper heavy against her thigh.  

 

She would need to write another letter, soon, she knew.  A letter without pleading or promise.  A letter of fact and finality.  A letter that might cost him as much to receive as it cost her to write.  

 

* * *

 

 

“Enter.”  Tyrion’s voice is sharp and she hesitates for a moment, then remembers her errand, her position. “Ah, Alysane.” Immediately his tone grows warm and she feels her nerves settle.  He hops from his chair and approaches her.  “I thought you were that idiot page of mine.”

 

“I do not mean to intrude, my Lord…”

 

“On the contrary, I was seeking an excuse to stop writing and here you are.  I thank you.”  He offers her a glass of wine, and noticing her bandages, takes her hands in his.  “My dear girl, to think I warned you not to spend time with my brother for fear of being burned by him.  If only we had known the refreshments were the real threat.”  

 

She offers him the bashful smile that he is seeking and he releases her, wine in hand.  

 

“How can I be of assistance?” Lord Tyrion asks when it is clear she will not speak first.  He gestures for her to sit opposite him in front of the fire.  Her skin prickles at the heat.  “Has my brother upset you in some way?”

 

She had hoped the evidence of her tears would be gone from her face, or that he would assume she wept out of pain.  She should have known he would not be so easily misled.  She takes a breath, feels the skin of her chest constrict.

 

“I wish to journey to Winterfell.” Spoken, the words take on the weight she longs for.  

 

He raises an eyebrow but does not seem surprised, of course.

 

“I met Lady Sansa, once,” she tells him by way of explanation. “She visited Lady Brienne on Tarth in the last months of Brienne’s life.  She extended an offer of employment to me then, but I could not leave my lady.  After her death…”

 

“You followed your letter West.”

 

Her eyes snap up.  The shock is a slap.

 

“I have seen your penmanship, Alysane.  I have also read your words.”  Told simply, it is obvious.  Coming here, she never expected to write for them.  She never expected Tyrion to have read the words she addressed so formally to his brother.

 

“Does Ser Jaime…?”  How quickly she slips back to calling him “Ser”, how immediately she is transported to Brienne’s room at Evenfall Hall.  

 

“I do not know.  Possibly, but observation has never been my brother’s strength.” She feels her heart relax, her breath steady.  Tyrion takes a long sip of his wine and sets his cup on the table between them.  “You wish to journey to Winterfell to work for my wife?”

“If she will have me.”  

 

“And if not?”  

 

“I know of some people at White Harbor who would give me work.”  Gerin’s family settled there after Tarth fell.  She knows his brother would take her in.

 

“You wish very much to leave us then.”  

 

Can he sense the deep well of heartbreak she is holding back?  He has read her letter, knows it to be hers.  He has seen inside her most private sorrow, he has warned her against saving his brother, he has held her blistered hands in his and he understands her need to leave this bright, hot, Summer.  He will not stop her, she knows, and she hopes he will not give his brother leave to do so.  

 

“I wish to travel North,” she tells him.  “I wish to see Winterfell.”  It is all she has, and it is a truth.  He nods.  

 

It is done.  

* * *

 

  
  
  
  



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